PS4

When it comes to the Yakuza series, I’m a bit of a tragic. I love the characters, I love the melodrama, I love the ridiculous sidequests, I love it all. So it comes as no surprise that I love Yakuza 6. While it is pretty much just more of the same old Yakuza that we’ve grown to know and love, there are several quality-of-life improvements that have been made, most of which make the game far more enjoyable. Still, I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite of the series.

On April 26th 2018, Epic Games turned off the servers for their free-to-play third-person MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena), Paragon, after only two short years. While the game did manage to build a fervent community during that time, the number of concurrent players just wasn’t enough to sustain ongoing development, and this was unfortunately impacted by the huge (and largely unexpected) success of Fortnite Battle Royale. Given that game’s unprecedented success, Epic needed to shift resources from one project to another, and unfortunately, something had to give. Long live Paragon.

Note: I wrote this so long ago now, that it’s almost too late to post it. But screw that – I spent time on this, so up it goes! Plus, regardless of when you may read this, the games on this list will still be good.

2017 was a great year for games – really one of the better years in living memory. Sure, there were some major controversies and disappointments, but in terms of the sheer amount of quality titles released, 2017 was wallet-cripplingly good. However, I have two young kids at home, so it was a struggle to get across everything – in fact, it was likely impossible. Still, here is my list of best games for 2017 – including games I played, and games I missed that I really wanted to play (and still hope to, in many cases). Sure, some of this is copied from my previous post, but most is new.

Hopefully you’ve read my initial impressions of Warframe, so you’ll know I’ve fallen for it. Perhaps as a result of that, you’ve decided to give Warframe a shot – at the very least, the price is right (you can’t beat free). Maybe you’ve played for an hour or so and learned how to manoeuvre your character around the environment only to find – BAM – suddenly you’re on board your ship, the Liset, and left to your own devices. How do you wade through all of this, and what are all these currencies and resources and … how the hell do you even level up??? Well, this is possibly the introduction you’re after. Here, I’ll be outlining/explaining what I learned in my first 25 hours of the game – a beginners overview of Warframe, BY a beginner. Note this is not a guide, just an explanation of how everything works, which I could have used about 20 hours of playtime prior to now…

It’s a weird thing to say, but it’s true – after around 20 hours with Warframe, I can safely say that I have barely scratched the surface. This indicates a couple of things: 1., that the game has an enormous amount of content, and 2., it’s likely incredibly complex. That said, I also feel I’ve played enough to provide my impressions on the game (and read into that as you will – it took me 20 hours to get comfortable enough to form a solid opinion). In brief: I’ve fallen in love with this game, but boy does it require a time investment.

With Destiny 2, Bungie has clearly taken the time to look at what was inherently good and bad about the original game, and used that as a foundation for a new title in the series, effectively creating a game that perhaps the original Destiny should have been. There are pros and cons to this approach, but I’m still struggling to gather my thoughts, and as the game itself is so polarising – it’s virtually impossible to cover all bases.

I’m not a big fan of mobile games. For the most part, the control scheme generally doesn’t feel right. Without buttons or thumbsticks, most games feel “off”, and those games that just require touch controls usually feel like quick time-wasters for me – I can never get invested enough to spend more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time, and my desire to do even that may only last a day or two. The other thing is that most mobile games feel too… intrusive or exploitatitve – just let me play the game and I’ll decide for myself if I want to spend money. Continue reading Exploring free-to-play